


say hello, wave goodbye

by palmviolet



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst, Discussions of Miscarriage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pregnancy, a Lot of angst i’m sorry, but we love her anyway, discussions of abortion, happy (or at least hopeful) ending, joyce makes some bad decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-07 01:51:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18863317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmviolet/pseuds/palmviolet
Summary: “ there are only so many parallel universes that concern us. in one, he isn’t dead. in another, you drink light with your hands all winter. there is a universe in which no one is lying emptied in the street as the gas station burns, a universe in which mothers haven’t learned to wrap their bones in each small grief they’ve found. “ — franny choi,introduction to quantum theory// in one timeline, a pregnant joyce byers stays in hawkins. in another, she doesn’t.





	1. the morning after the month before

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Three Minute Revelation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18399938) by [GallifreyGod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyGod/pseuds/GallifreyGod). 



> this was inspired originally by the wonderful gallifreygod’s fic three minute revelation, though it grew from the roughly 6,000 word oneshot i intended it to be into a wholly different beast. i would recommend reading that first for mindset and context, though it’s not really necessary.
> 
> title is from soft cell’s amazing song under the same name, which i would definitely recommend as it shares some of the same vibes of this fic. chapter title is from insecure me by soft cell also, which is honestly such a great song. soft cell as a whole have some great 80s bangers beyond just tainted love lmao. 
> 
> this fic is a great deal more experimental than anything i’ve done before, and i hope the whole timeline thing isn’t too confusing - as i said, i was very inspired by the ambiguity of the fic this is inspired by and i decided to take it a step further. enjoy!

_And with that, she picked up the test and read the result._

 

Negative. It’s negative.

She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she settles for releasing a shaky sigh from fragile lungs. Negative. She’s not pregnant. No kid. Nothing tying her here, nothing’s changed from three minutes ago. She can leave with a guilt-free conscience.

She fumbles for a cigarette, slumping back against the locked door. As the smoke escapes her lips in wispy curls, she surveys the bathroom that very soon will no longer belong to her - the outdated green tiles, the carpet lifting in the corners. It’s time for a change, she’s known that for a while, and clearly her body knows it too - because if she’s not pregnant (which she’s not), there has to be some other explanation for the symptoms wracking her body. The dizziness, the weakness in the mornings. The nausea. The aches and pains. Maybe she’s just getting older - maybe she’s just getting tired. 

She clenches her jaw, stares again at the little pink stick. She feels weak, lightheaded after the hollow tension that had built in her gut. Just a slight hiccup. Doesn’t change anything. She has to get up off this floor, go finish packing up. Cook their last supper. 

None of that feels real anymore, in the wake of what’s just happened. It feels irrelevant. She can’t imagine chopping vegetables, leaning over the stove, setting out plates of food to be eaten off laps (since the table’s been packed away). Driving away with Will and Jonathan into tomorrow’s closing dusk. That’s not real, that’s not her life. In the last three minutes her life narrowed to these four walls, and she’s struggling to widen it again. To think of anything beyond the kid, the kid that could have been. Hers and Hopper’s kid. 

Those three minutes- 

Like Schrodinger’s cat. She was both pregnant and not, until she wasn’t. _Negative._

“Fucking Schrodinger,” she mutters, and pulls herself to her feet.

—

_And with that, she picked up the test and read the result._

 

Positive. It’s positive.

The floor tilts under her feet. Her vision narrows and blurs and her lungs constrict, heart beginning to race. Oh, no. Oh god no. She stares at the little pink stick in panic, in pain, in confusion - then she grabs it with shaking hands and snaps it in two. God, she can’t do this. She’s nearly forty-three, she can’t have another kid. Jonathan’s eighteen now, he could have a kid of his own, that means her kid could have a nephew or niece older than them- what the fuck is she gonna tell him, tell _Will-_

What is she gonna tell Hopper? Jesus, she can’t leave now, she can’t- she can’t make it on her own, not pregnant, not with Jonathan leaving soon, not with Will still lonely, still traumatised. She hasn’t got a place sorted, not yet, they were going to stay with Bob’s parents for a week or two (though there is a sort of relief in preventing that, at least) - and neither Jonathan nor Will were easy pregnancies, and she’s not gotten any younger. She can’t leave, no matter how much she might want to.

She swallows the panic with an effort and resists the urge to fumble for a cigarette. She shouldn’t, not now, didn’t she read somewhere it could harm the baby? Jesus, her fingers are already itching. This is gonna be a long eight months.

_This is gonna be-_

Such definite terms already, like this is really happening, like this isn’t all some crazy dream-

Her kid. Hers and Hopper’s kid. Their kid. 

(Why wasn’t she more careful? How could she be this stupid? Didn’t she know better than to take risks?)

She spends the next ten minutes retching into the toilet, a combination of morning sickness and anxiety that she knows all too well. At least Lonnie’s not here to make everything worse. Small mercies.

When she goes out into the hall, she feels lost among the boxes, the walls bare of pictures. Boxes she’ll have to unpack, pictures she’ll have to put back up. A house she was all but ready to bid goodbye to, that will be the nursery to her next fucking kid. 

If she was Karen Wheeler, sure. If she had a husband with a cushy job and a shiny pension, a rich-person picket fence - but she’s no Karen Wheeler. She’s going to struggle. She’ll have to find another job, probably two. Go back to working nights and weekends and holidays, just to keep a roof over her head - over Jonathan’s head, over Will’s, over this kid’s, as yet unnamed. 

Instead of facing the boxes, the stove, dinner to be prepared, she gets in her car and drives to the store (sacking be damned), buys three more pregnancy tests and takes them with her to the staff bathroom with a glare so scorching Donald flinches. She’d rather not share her business with Donald fucking Melvald, but she has to be sure. _She has to be sure._

Three pregnancy tests later, nine painful minutes later, she’s sure.

She and Hopper are having a kid.

—

Dinner’s on, the cursed kitchen timer ticking away on the counter, when there’s a knock on the door. Even by the sound, she can tell - it’s sad, final. A parting shot. And, just as she guessed, it’s Hopper and El standing on her doorstep, the former holding a casserole in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. (He’s becoming a regular Karen Wheeler, she thinks wryly, considers making the joke but her stomach turns.)

El’s eyes are already shining with tears, Hopper’s grave and sad, and she thinks about turning them away. “Don’t make this any harder than it already is,” she says under her breath to Hopper, when El’s back is turned. 

He looks at her bitterly. “There’s a pretty damn quick way to make it easier,” he responds. “Stay - Joyce, you don’t have to go-“

She turns her head. She can’t listen to this, she can’t.

Dinner is stilted, awkward. Jonathan is sullen and silent, Will mopey and sad. She hates this, hates what she’s doing to them - but she can’t see any other way out. Will will be happier someplace else, she knows that. And Jonathan’s off to NYU so soon that it doesn’t really matter - it will be better, in fact, because they’ll be closer to him. 

(This is what she’s been telling herself, over and over. Happier, closer, safer. Three words that cycle around her brain until they lose all semblance of meaning.)

When it’s time for the two to go, El hugs each of them tight, makes them promise to call, to write. Jonathan moves to clear the plates and Will and El go outside, and then it’s just Joyce and Hop, alone in her hall. He looks at her long and hard. His face is shadowed, just this side of heartbroken. Like he thinks he can still convince her. (The only thing that could convince her is lying in the trash outside, a splash of pink amongst gray cartons and empty wrappers.)

“Joyce-“ he starts. He takes her wrist with a touch so immeasurably gentle as to make her eyes sting, and he draws it up to kiss her hand. 

“Hopper- please, I can’t-“

“I wish I had some way of persuading you to stay,” he says. 

“I wish you did too,” she whispers almost unthinkingly, and the pain in his eyes worsens tenfold. “Hop- I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, really I am.”

He presses something into her hand, closing her fingers around it with a feather-light touch. Then he kisses her softly. It’s warm, salty with something she belatedly realises are her tears, and she tries to cling onto the closeness for as long as possible, keeping her eyes closed even as he moves away and leaves her cold.

When she does open her eyes, he’s gone out to his car, and curled in her fist is his scuffed zippo lighter, the one with his initials engraved at the bottom. _JRH_ \- she traces them absently with her thumb, over and over. The long plane curling at the bottom of _J,_ the extravagant loops of _R,_ the correct and proper lines of _H._

She watches them leave, keeps on watching til long after the taillights have disappeared into the trees.

—

When Hopper shows up on her doorstep, wine in hand, her heart sinks. (He’s becoming a regular Karen Wheeler, she thinks wryly, considers making the joke but her stomach turns.) She hadn’t wanted this, hadn’t planned it. She doesn’t know what she was thinking, in truth. Maybe just never leave, and hope they all forgot they were planning to - but Hawkins doesn’t work like that. _Hopper_ doesn’t work like that.

“Hopper-“ she starts, takes El in a one-armed hug. 

“There’s gotta be something I can say, anything-“ he interrupts, and she sighs, rubs her forehead.

“Hopper, we’re not leaving.”

His face is almost comical. His eyes widen, brows rising, jaw slack, expression struck dumb. He really didn’t expect her to fold, she realises. He really thought she was gone forever. Into that shocked vacuum of emotion, however, comes flooding a whole plethora she’d expected - hope, relief, happiness. Some thread of omnipresent concern. El’s staring at her like she can’t believe what she’s hearing - “Really? You’re really staying?”

“We’re really staying,” she confirms, quietly, because she can’t share in their joy. Not when the reason is a life, a life that’s derailing all her plans. Just like the first time, in fact - Jonathan was an unplanned incident, one that left her trembling on her bathroom floor much like earlier that day. If not for Jonathan, she wouldn’t have married Lonnie - if he hadn’t knocked her up, he’d probably never have gone further than a casual boyfriend, an occasional hookup and a date for parties. But that’s another road unexplored, another road she never went down. Another Schrodinger.

At dinner, the atmosphere is positive, loud, jovial. Jonathan cracks jokes that send the other three into raucous laughter, while Hopper begins telling them outlandish stories from his days as a big city cop. When he offers her wine, she shakes her head - yet another thing she has to watch, has to give up for the sake of this child - and he frowns, only briefly. She thinks about telling him - but she can’t, not yet. Not yet.

When they’ve eaten, Jonathan clears the plates, while El and Will go to his room to mess with his stereo, leaving Joyce and Hop alone at the table. He leans towards her, face serious and earnest.

“I want you to know, Joyce- you’re making the right decision, I promise. I’m gonna keep you and your family safe. You can be happy here, I promise.”

Her face twists. “Please, Hop. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

He frowns then, and she realises quite how close he is - so close she can feel his warmth, smell the wine, the smoke, that morning’s coffee. Notice every detail of his face - his brow pulled low, his eyes clouded with concern. His lips.

There’s so much weighing on her mind, so much _shit._ She hasn’t taken a proper breath since that afternoon, since those three minutes, and her heart hasn’t stopped pounding-

She could do with a distraction. And what’s the worst that could happen? She gets knocked up? 

She gets in a silent, private laugh at her own stupid joke, before pressing her lips to his and kissing hard. His mouth is hot and pliant, and his hands move instinctively to tug her closer- then she feels him hesitate.

“Joyce? You sure you’re okay?”

She kisses him again, letting the warmth take over. “Shh.” 

He pulls back, looks at her hard. “Joyce?”

She leans closer, breath ghosting over his lips. “I’m fine,” she lies. She’s fine.

—

They leave at lunchtime the next day. It’s a hot, humid day, the sky hungover with cloud, the sun burning behind a hazy shroud. There’s a silent battle between her and Jonathan (who of course has his own car) over who Will rides with - ultimately Jonathan wins, and she has to drive alone. She’d have had his car freighted up there if she could, if she could afford it - but she couldn’t. Same with the furniture - the heavier stuff like the sofa is in storage, awaiting transport, but as for the rest- both cars are full to the brim.

Jonathan gave her a cassette to listen to, at least. He doesn’t completely hate her. When she puts it on, it’s surprisingly upbeat for him - sure, there’s the dramatic tones of The Smiths and The Cure, but they’re mixed in with tracks she knows he would never listen to, tracks she’s found herself humming along to on the radio in the past. Blondie takes center stage, and it’s when she’s halfheartedly singing along to the final few bars - _don’t leave me hanging on the telephone, hang up and run to me_ \- that several things occur to her at once.

One, this is most definitely a mixtape made for her. Jonathan’s never listened to Blondie in his life, has scoffed affectionately at her when she’s danced along to it in the kitchen. That, at least, gives her heart. Makes her think they can make it through this, as a family. Together.

Two, she’s really leaving. _They’re_ really leaving. The signs for Hawkins are beginning to disappear - she’s nearly in Ohio, in fact. Leaving Indiana in its entirety. There’s a distinct possibility that she’ll never go back - that there are faces she’ll never see again. Donald Melvald, Scott Clarke, Claudia Henderson. Some faces that were kind to her, some that were not. 

Three, Hopper might well be one of those faces.

It’s nearly enough to make her pull over, cry her eyes out, maybe even turn around. The thought that she might never see him again - the boy she traded kisses for smokes with under the steps in senior year, the man who saved her and her son - it’s nearly enough to make her weep. But she doesn’t do any of these things. She keeps her eyes on the road, even as they sting and burn with the threat of tears, and clenches her hand tighter on the wheel. 

She’s got miles and miles to go before she can rest. 

They spend that night in a dingy motel on the outskirts of Cleveland. She can only afford one room, so Jonathan takes one bed and her the other; after a brief hesitation Will joins her, curling into her like he used to when he was small. She breathes a silent sigh of relief at the contact, at her sons coming back to her despite it all. Jonathan looks across at her, over Will’s shoulder, and his face is unreadable. She thinks she can find some softness in his jaw, though, in the line of his brow, in the shine of his eyes.

“Sleep well,” she says quietly, and he flicks the lights off without a word.

The night itself is awful. Will cries himself to sleep into her shoulder and she tries to stifle the sob that rises in her in response - because she made this choice, and she has to stick to it. She’s gonna make it work, she has to.

She lies awake for hours, til long after Will’s gone silent and still, staring into the dark. The highway outside still roars with traffic, even in the early hours, and at around two she’s stuck listening to the angry squeak of their neighbors’ mattress, going on for at least an hour. It’s a bit of a shithole, this motel, this place she’s brought her sons - but it’s a pitstop, she thinks. Everything will be better when they get to Maine.

—

Joyce manages to avoid Hopper for the next few days. It’s easy enough - she’s busy unpacking the house, calming down the realtor who’s tearing his hair at the prospect of her reneging on the deal. She manages to convince him to let her keep the house, to find some hole in the contract. It’s that or the streets - no choice at all.

Will gives her spontaneous hugs at random intervals, and she catches Jonathan smiling into space when he thinks no one’s looking. She wants to join them, to share in the euphoria that clouds in the air, but she can’t. These are halcyon days, soon to be shattered. She’ll have to tell them, soon enough. Tell Hopper. Tell Hawkins. (God, she’s not looking forward to that conversation.)

Then one muggy Friday night finds her at Hopper’s door, just like how this whole mess started a little over two months ago. The kids are all sleeping over at the Wheelers’, Jonathan’s got date night with Nancy, and Joyce is feeling the loneliness, the empty house weighing on her like a thundercloud. The anxiety. The racing thoughts beginning to tighten her chest. So she drives out to the cabin, realising as she knocks she should have brought something - wine, or dinner - but then he opens the door and it’s too late.

“Joyce,” he says, a hint of surprise to his tone. He looks handsome in the twilight - strong, Roman profile, broad shoulders covered by a tight t-shirt. Her perfect distraction.

She leans up to kiss him without so much as a hello.

They end up in a tangled mess of limbs on his sofa, hot and heavy and gasping for breath, clothes strewn on the floor. When they’re both finished she doesn’t move away, lying curled into his side on the cramped couch. He sighs into her skin.

“We should move to the bed,” he says. He shifts underneath her and she whines, sitting up reluctantly. Then he looks at her, takes her in, and she feels self conscious for the first time. She’s not so young as she was, her skin’s not so smooth - she’s thin, rather than slender, from stress and lately the struggle to afford food. (Soon she won’t be, of course- but she doesn’t want to think about that now, not when her mind is still slow and sleepy in the post-sex afterglow.)

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers. He’s staring, something in his eyes that she’d rather not face - so she pushes him down and kisses him again. _That’ll be the pregnancy glow,_ she thinks with a stab of bitterness, then stops thinking at all.

—

They’re in a motel on the outskirts of Utica, only a few days out from Maine, when Will wakes up screaming. Joyce does anything she can to get him to calm down, to pull him out of that dark haze - Jonathan does too - but nothing seems to work, to bring him back to himself. She’s reduced to a tearful, begging mess - _Will, please, sweetie, it’s me, it’s me, you’re okay, you’re safe -_ clasping his face, his shoulders, in shaking hands. And she sees, out of the corner of her eye, Jonathan reaching for the phone unconsciously, automatically, a number rising on both of their minds.

But Hopper’s hundreds and hundreds of miles away. There’s nothing he can do, and Jonathan sets the receiver down with a grim expression. They’re on their own.

Eventually Will comes back to them, blinks at them with shadowed eyes. “Mom- Jonathan- I’m sorry-“

“Hey, no, don’t apologise, okay?” she replies, tugging him into a fierce hug. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”

But Jonathan’s looking at her with narrowed eyes, and her breaths are still tremulous. And the truth is, they’re not okay. They’re going far, far away, putting more and more miles between them and Hawkins with every rest stop, every shitty motel. It was supposed to get better, the further they got. It was supposed to be good for them. But this- with Will- it’s one of his worst in a while. And while Hopper could never really do much either, he was _there._ If not for Will’s sake, then for hers. 

And now he’s not. And he never will be.

She lights a cigarette in the dark with shaky fingers as Jonathan embraces his brother. It’s all up to her now, just like it used to be right after Lonnie left. Her and her boys against the world.

She made it then. She can make it now.

—

The next morning she wakes up to streaming sunlight and Hopper’s arm draped over her middle. There’s a moment of panic, a moment of _shit, she’s getting too deep-_

Before she forces herself to relax. It’s just sex, sunlit cuddles notwithstanding - it means nothing, in the long run. It’s fine. (Besides, she can’t ignore the warmth that stirs in her at the weight of his arm.)

He moves against her, blinking awake. “Joyce?” he says, voice low and gravelly in the early morning. “What time is it?”

She checks her watch. “Just after seven,” she replies. He looks as good as, if not better than, he did last night. His hair is sleep-mussed, his eyes bleary, half-lidded against the harsh streams of light. The golden beams cast him in a glow that’s serene, almost divine- and she looks away, because casual sex is one thing, but tracing his features like this, like he’s hers to glamorise, to wax poetic about-

It’s not an option.

“Perfect,” he grouses, leaning up so his face is mere inches from hers. “Enough time for round two.”

The idea is tempting. He’s golden and glorious in the sunlight, and at the very prospect she can feel that heat pooling between her legs - but it feels wrong. Everytime she kisses him, leads him down inside her, lets him fuck her until the incessant voice in her head just _stops,_ it feels like another lie. And she can’t keep on lying to him. She really can’t.

So she stiffens, almost unconsciously, and immediately his eyes flicker from lust to concern. “Hey, you okay?” 

She nods, looking anywhere but his tender gaze. “Yeah, I just- I-“ She can’t finish a sentence.

He leans back and reaches for his pack of cigarettes, ever present. He brings one to his lips and lights it, and she inhales the scent of nicotine with bitter, rueful regret. He clearly notices the way she’s staring, because he holds it out to her. “Old times’ sake?”

She shakes her head. _God._

He looks at her with a strange expression and takes another puff. “Look, Joyce, can we talk? Honestly, like adults? I- I gotta know. Why did you really stay in Hawkins?” She doesn’t reply, and he takes that as a cue to continue. “You were all packed up, boxes ready, kids saying their goodbyes, then just like _that_ ,” he snaps his fingers, “you were staying again. I need to know- are you okay? What’s going on? You can talk to me, you know that.”

She takes a deep breath. The words are on the tip of her tongue, just waiting to spill out- _I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant with your kid. You knocked me up. You fucking knocked me up, Jim Hopper, you bastard. You fucking asshole._

But when she opens her mouth, the words don’t come, and she’s left choking on everything left unsaid. Then suddenly a sob crawls up her throat, and she can’t contain it - and then she’s weeping, shoulders trembling, eyes stinging and burning with tears that drip down her cheeks.

“Hey,” Hopper says roughly, and draws her into his arms. She sobs into his shoulder, unable to muster the words either to reassure him or to tell him the truth. She’s reduced to clinging on to him like a lifeline, like an anchor in the tumultuous sea that surrounds her, threatens to drown her. Him, the man who’s been to her over the years everything a man can possibly be to a woman - a stranger, an acquaintance, a friend, a boyfriend, an enemy, a lover. Now- now she’s not sure what he is, only that he’s here, and she needs him. Needs him _desperately._ Only it still feels like a lie- but she can’t get the truth out now, not when he’s warm and solid and holds her like she’s worth something.

After a while her weeping subsides and she sits back, brushing away the remaining tears from her cheeks with shaking fingers. Hopper’s looking at her with concern, like she’s fragile, made of porcelain or glass, and it makes her face twist. “Don’t- don’t look at me like that,” she says, when she can finally get words out again.

“Like what?” he asks, perfectly innocently, like he doesn’t know-

“Like I’m fucking breakable! Like I’m about to- to shatter-“

He reaches for her, and she pulls away. “Joyce, I wasn’t- I don’t think that, of course I don’t-“

“Don’t you?” She meets his eyes, stares at him with such force that he has to look away. “Doesn’t everyone? Jesus, does it matter why I stayed? You got what you wanted, didn’t you? Aren’t you happy now? I’m here in Hawkins, I’m here in your fucking bed, isn’t that all you wanted?”

He flinches back. There’s hurt on his face, raw hurt in his eyes. She allows herself a bitter second for regret as he hardens with anger. “You’re the one who came here, _you_ kissed _me_ , let’s not forget!” His voice is rising, something sharp entering his tone. “I- All I want - all I’ve ever wanted - is for you to be okay. I want you to be _okay,_ Joyce, jesus, you really have a low opinion of me-“

She scoffs. “Huh, I wonder where I got that from. Aren’t I just another notch in the bedpost? Look me in the face and tell me this wasn’t just as casual as it always is with you.”

“Because that’s what you wanted!” he shouts. His face is reddening, eyes widening with fury. “You’ve been _very_ clear from the start that you only wanted it to be casual! You’re the one who said that! Not me! If it was up to me-“

“What?” She leans close, looking into his eyes unflinchingly. “You’d what?”

“I’d have done this properly!” he yells. “I’d have- hell, I’d have brought you flowers, and taken you out to dinner, and kissed you goodnight, because I care about you! I care about you, Joyce! So sue me.”

She stares at him. 

She stares at him, because that- that was _not_ what she expected. A date? He wanted to take her out on a date? Flowers? Dinner? A goodnight kiss? “You- you care about me?” she repeats, voice barely a whisper. 

“Jesus, Joyce, ‘course I do.” His gaze is intense, pleading even. “That’s why you gotta talk to me- you gotta let me in. Please.”

She considers it. She could let him in, could tell him everything, describe every excruciating second of those three minutes she spent waiting on her bathroom floor. And then- what? What would he do? Would he be happy, angry? He’d either lead her down the aisle or throw her out of his house - either way, it’s not something she can face, not just yet. (She’s always been secretly, privately a coward.)

So she just shakes her head and scrambles out of his bed like she can’t get away from him fast enough, though deep down that’s never been true. Her clothes are strewn across his cabin and she feels self-conscious as she goes to pick them up, when Hopper’s hand lands on her arm.

“Joyce, please, talk to me-“

She goes on dressing without a word, pinching her lips together to stop herself from spilling all. She can’t meet his eyes, can’t see the despair she knows she’ll find there.

“What, now you won’t even look at me? What-“ Finished dressing, she brushes past him, heading for the door. “Joyce!” he calls after her, voice beginning to sound desperate. “Joyce!”

There are more tears stinging and blurring her eyes. “I’m sorry!” she blurts out, not looking back at him. Then she leaves.

God, she’s made a mess of things.

—

That day they set out without stopping for breakfast. Joyce wants to put as many miles between them and Hawkins as possible. She can’t shake the feeling there’s something coming after them, some dark trace of everything that happened last fall, that they have to outrun. And so what if with every new town, every state line they cross, she can imagine Hopper’s fading too? It’s a fantasy, she knows that, knows it as clearly as she knows the pattern of his initials on his lighter - but it can’t hurt to pretend.

At eleven thirty Will begins to complain, citing his empty stomach, and with reluctance she signals and pulls over at the next roadside diner. Jonathan follows, and they park side by side. The diner is small, tacky, with sticky red seats, but it’s not the worst place they’ve eaten on their journey east. The food, when it arrives, is filling and not too expensive - that’s all she can ask, really. They eat in silence, until Jonathan speaks.

“That car, do you recognise it?” 

She and Will turn to follow his gaze. He’s looking at a car parked two spaces down from her own green Pinto, a black sedan of a make she can’t identify. “Uh, I don’t know, maybe? Why?” It’s not like black sedans are uncommon, and they’ve passed a hell of a lot of cars on their way. 

“Just- a feeling. I saw it when we stopped in Utica last night, and when we stopped for gas near Buffalo a couple days ago. And the driver - he’s just sitting there, he hasn’t come into the diner, like he’s waiting for us to leave.”

Joyce stares at the car. It looks darker, more threatening, the more she looks. She forces her gaze away. Paranoia, that’s all it is. The journey, Will’s episode - it has them all a little on edge. It’s just a coincidence. There must be thousands upon thousands of black sedans on the road, and even if it is the same car- 

They can’t be the only people going east. 

That night, their last before Maine, they’re in a motel near Portsmouth, and the air is fresh and salty. The sea is only a couple miles away, and Joyce considers taking her boys to the seafront the next day, before they complete their journey. After all, she’s only ever seen the sea once, and Will and Jonathan both have never. (There’s an annual school trip in fifth grade, but she couldn’t afford it. They never complained, though she noticed the way Will’s smile dimmed as his friends enthused about it.) It would be nice, she thinks. A nice, fresh start. 

The motel isn’t half bad, either. They’re on the second floor and the windows are large, making the room light and airy. There’s even a TV, small and crackly though it is, and Will spends the evening channel hopping between equally horrendous game shows. Jonathan makes dry quips about them and Will laughs, and for a moment it feels like everything is normal - like everything can still be normal for them. Like they really are gonna be okay. 

She takes out a cigarette and fumbles for her lighter, cursing under her breath when she can’t find it. “Jonathan, have you seen my lighter?” 

“No,” he responds, at the same time as Will says, “I think you left it in the car.”

“Okay, thanks, I’ll be back in a sec.” She ruffles her younger son’s hair fondly and he ducks, and it feels like her heart is bursting with love and relief. She’s smiling when she goes out to the walkway, still smiling when she spots the black sedan.

Her stomach drops. 

There’s a man leaning against it, smoking in the cool evening air. He’s average height, in a cheap, rumpled suit, and has an eminently forgettable face. He doesn’t look particularly sinister - but then again, they never do. He could be anyone, here to hurt her and her boys - or he could be no one, just another traveller like them. Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong color car. 

Still, when he goes to the payphone by his car she can’t help but creep down the steps and loiter in the shadows, listening intently. 

“Hey, Joey… Yeah, huh, they have no idea. And lemme tell you, it’s pretty boring work. Not like they put it in the movies. Stuck in my fucking car all day… the wife’s been trying to get me on a diet, but it’s never gonna work if I’m just hopping diner to diner, eating greasy shit… Oh, pussy yourself, asshole! I have respect for my body! I’m actually gonna live past fifty, see my kids grow up… Yeah, well, you’re right about that. I’m waiting on a fat paycheck, we’ll see if it ever shows up… They told me not to contact anyone, but that’s some bullshit right there, I mean, workers’ rights? Pretty sure I could sue… Well, anyway, I oughta go. I’m burning through my last few cents talking to you, you know that, right? I’ll see ya when I get back…”

He hangs up and she hurries to seem inconspicuous, fiddling with her cigarette pack. He passes her on his way out, gives her a bland, polite smile, and when he’s gone she feels cold. _They have no idea. Not like they put it in the movies._ It’s nothing concrete, but in the right context- it’s damning.

She feels exposed now, out here in the open. She can’t bring herself to go to her car, and she recalls she’s still got Hop’s lighter tucked in her pocket. So she goes back to the stairs, lighting her cigarette with shaking hands, tracing his initials like they’re a lifeline, an anchor in the tumultuous sea that surrounds her, threatens to drown her. Him, the man who’s been to her over the years everything a man can possibly be to a woman - a stranger, an acquaintance, a friend, a boyfriend, an enemy, a lover. Now- now he’s a stranger again, but all she knows is that she misses him, and he’s not here, and she needs him. Needs him desperately.

After a moment’s hesitation, and a suspicious look at the black sedan, she goes over to the payphone herself. She finds a few loose cents in her pocket and dials from memory before she can lose her nerve - and in those few seconds while the phone connects, in the silence before the blaring tone, she has to take several deep breaths. She’s not sure whether she wants him to pick up or not- but he does, and then his gravelly voice is reaching across the miles, across time until they’re high schoolers again. _Joyce and Jim_ , smoking and skipping class. But they’ll never be those kids again, and they’re thousands of miles apart.

“Hello?” he says. That one word, those two simple syllables - it’s nearly enough to make her cry.

“Hop,” she whispers into the phone, cradling it by her ear. 

“Joyce,” he says, immediately sounding urgent, more alert. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine- we’re fine,” she replies. She thinks about the black sedan, thinks about telling him- but she’d sound paranoid, delusional. Like she’s begging him to come save her, which she’s not. “How’s El?”

“She’s good, she- she misses Will. She misses you.” There’s a beat. “I miss you.”

She swallows painfully. She doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want to let the guilt come rushing over her head. “Look, Hop, I gotta go, I- um, I’ll call you soon, okay? Bye.”

He starts to say her name, but she hangs up the receiver before he can finish it. Her breaths are shaky, and she’s not so convinced this was a good idea. Hearing his voice- it sent a whole cascade of emotions through her, emotions she tried to bury in that first long night in Cleveland. But here she is.

She flicks her cigarette deliberately onto the hood of the black sedan as she walks past.

—

Joyce has a job interview. It’s been a while, over ten years, and she’s out of practice. What’s she going to say, when they ask _what makes you qualified for this job?_ That she faced monsters from other dimensions, that she held her nerve against senior government goons? No, she tells them about her ten years at Melvald’s, and her time at the old bar in the center, and the bookshop downtown, and hopes all that’s enough. Facing monsters? Frankly, she’s a bit fucking overqualified- but they don’t see her like that. They see her as a fragile single mother, barely clinging to the threads of her sanity, and she would count herself lucky to get a job at all.

The other applicants have shiny shoes and coiffed hair, and she feels vastly inferior. She’s older than them, poorer than them. And it’s not like this is a high-flying job, or one that at least pays well - it’s retail, paying dirt. But this is Reagan’s America, and kids with college degrees that they’d struggled to pay for return to Hawkins to find this is the only job waiting for them. Joyce hasn’t got a college degree, hasn’t got much of anything going for her except a grim willingness to work long hours and double shifts.

It has to be enough.

After the interview, when she’s shaken the man’s curiously limp hand and been seen to the door, she longs desperately for a smoke. Something to take the edge off. Her nerves are fraying, her hands still trembling - it’s been nearly a week of withdrawal, and although the worst is over, she still feels desperate at the faintest trace of smoke in the air. 

If she doesn’t get this job-

She doesn’t know what to do. She could always whore herself out, she thinks with a wry smile. Take Hawkins’ guilty husbands to the motel on the edge of town, pretend she isn’t acquainted with every one of their wives. Become the slut they all called her when Lonnie knocked her up before marrying her. Except she’s at least ten years too old, and the idea is frankly insane.

(Too bad - there’s probably heaps of cash in prostitution.)

As she’s walking to her car, she spots Karen Wheeler getting out of her own car at the other end of the car park. She bows her head, tries to avoid the other woman’s gaze- but it’s too late, she’s been spotted. Karen marches over to her like she’s a project. A problem to be solved. Joyce can’t avoid her, much as she longs to.

“Joyce!” she crows, loudly and ridiculously. Joyce swings round to face her reluctantly.

“Karen,” she replies, sighing. God, she needs a cigarette.

“How’ve you been? I heard you were leaving- I’m so glad you’re not, I’d miss you too much-“

“Karen, if you don’t mind, I’ve gotta go-“

“You’re glowing,” the other woman says, and Joyce stops short. Shit. “You look amazing- I’d recognise that kind of glow anywhere. You’re pregnant, aren’t you? Who’s the lucky guy?”

Joyce swallows hard. She doesn’t want to tell Karen fucking Wheeler, of course she doesn’t- her kind-of friend from high school, who votes Republican now like she never even gave a shit. She thinks about lying, but Karen, for all her faults, is a mother too. She notices the signs. “Doesn’t matter, really, does it?”

Karen’s gaze softens, and for a moment Joyce recognises her old friend, the one who used to tease her about boys and share her expensive clothes. “It’s Chief Hopper, isn’t it?” she asks, and Joyce shuts down.

She fumbles with her car keys. She has to get away, doesn’t want to face this with Hawkins’ most notorious PTA member. But Karen is staring at her with the kind of incisiveness she’s seen on Nancy’s face, seen on Mike’s - it must be genetic - and she has no choice but to face her. “Look, no offence, Karen, but I don’t see how this is any of your business-“

Karen reaches out a hand and Joyce stills. She doesn’t want to talk about this, she really doesn’t, but the idea of support- of sharing this awful, awful burden- maybe she could relent for that. Maybe she needs that. Even if it’s with Reagan-voting Karen Wheeler.

“If you wanna talk about it, Joyce, I’m here. If you wanna rant about that asshole, or just reminisce about old times- i’m always available. Call me. Okay?”

Joyce nods despite herself. Karen is always, always, disgustingly available. (She doesn’t work, of course she doesn’t - her husband, even as they tread icy ground, earns upwards of 50k a year, and their picket fence has never been shinier.) Joyce can’t feel jealous, though. Karen was born into this sort of life, and she was just following a well-trodden path by marrying older, boring, rich Ted Wheeler. Joyce never had a shot with any of it. Joyce was born poor, and poor she’ll remain.

Yet for some reason Karen insists on hanging out with her, goes out of her way to do so. Joyce doesn’t know if it’s genuine, or just some rich-girl fascination - but Karen is, at the end of the day, one of her only friends. She’d be stupid to ignore a well-meant offer of support.

“Thanks, Karen,” she responds honestly, giving her an attempt at a bright smile. “You- you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Of course not,” the woman replies. “Your secret’s safe with me.” She taps her nose mischievously, and Joyce can’t tell if it’s tongue-in-cheek or a genuine promise - and ultimately, what does it matter? Everyone in this town’s already let her down some way or another. It’s not like Karen would be a surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- the blondie song is hanging on the telephone, released in 1978. i have a whole load of opinions about joyce’s music taste (and will forever be bitter that her spotify playlist is _just halloween songs_ ), and one of them is that she loves blondie - because come on, they’re very her. also fleetwood mac & bruce springsteen.
> 
> \- i have no idea how long it takes to get from hawkins to augusta, maine. google maps can only go so far.


	2. chasing heartache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ i could tell you
> 
> about the many universes in which bad things  
> happen to people other than the people
> 
> you love. “

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a couple warnings for this second (and final) chapter - panic attacks, mildly dubious consent (not between joyce & hop don’t worry), discussions of both abortion & (somewhat graphic) miscarriage, & very briefly mentioned domestic violence.
> 
> summary is again from _introduction to quantum theory_ by franny choi.

Bob’s parents are shiftless, morose. Their house in Augusta is nice, on the small side, but nice enough. More of a picket fence than her own house ever was - and Joyce can suddenly see it, their potential life here, oh so clearly. Can see herself bidding the boys goodbye in the mornings as they go off to the sunshine-yellow school bus, can see Bob making her coffee and kissing her chastely in front of the kitchen window. It hurts, more than she’d expected. It’s like a glimpse into the future that never was, wound intrinsically with the past that ultimately faded. 

Bob’s mom, Geraldine, is short, perpetually rosy-cheeked, light-haired and Irish on her mother’s side. Bob’s dad, Nick, is taller, more somber, and entirely different to all the men Joyce has ever known. He doesn’t have much of a presence, just as Bob didn’t - he seems the type to crack self-deprecating jokes, if only the occasion weren’t so bleak. She feels safe around him, if not entirely happy. He couldn’t pose a threat if he tried, not to her or to her boys. She appreciates that. 

Both of them greet them at the door, standing almost on ceremony. Nick comes to help with their bags (though Joyce aims to be there only a week at most) and Geraldine stands in the doorway, holding up her watery smile like a welcome sign. Joyce met them once before, when they visited Hawkins for Bob’s birthday and invited her with him out to dinner. It was a cheery affair, though she felt horribly exposed in the kind of restaurant Karen took her wealthy friends for light lunches (the Newbys aren’t so affluent, but they’re respectably middle class and had been saving for a while).

Now they’re very different. Less smiling, less cheerful. Is it any wonder? Joyce feels fragile the moment she steps across the threshold, like she could shatter at the lightest of touches. And Geraldine doesn’t hold back - she grabs her in a hug so tight Joyce can feel it constricting her chest. 

“Geraldine- thank you so much for letting us stay-“

The older woman shakes her head. “No, no, it’s the least we could do for you - for your family - you were so good to Bob-“

Joyce feels her lungs tighten. God, this was a mistake. Bob’s parents have nothing but kind words for her, when his death, his funeral - it was all a lie. She doesn’t deserve their kindness.

“You must be Will!” Geraldine cries, moving past her to him. Will looks discomfited at the attention, but receives it politely - Jonathan’s not so welcoming. His face is dark and worried as he walks up the steps with Nick, who seems wise enough not to attempt conversation. Again Joyce feels a flutter of panic. But she staves it off - she has to. 

They eat dinner together, the five of them, something hot and home-cooked for the first time in over a week. She and her boys tried their best to help, but Geraldine would have none of it. _Nonsense, you’re guests_ , she kept on saying. As if that didn’t make Joyce feel worse and worse.

When they’ve finished eating Jonathan leaves the table, claims a headache in a sullen voice. Will soon follows, and then it’s just her and her guilt and Bob’s parents.

“He thought the world of you, you know,” Nick says quietly. “You were good for him, I could tell.”

Joyce swallows. She doesn’t know what to say - what she could _possibly_ say. 

“He was so happy when you agreed to a date. He called us, remember?” He looks over at his wife. “Said _I’m going on a date with Joyce Horowitz. Me! And Joyce Horowitz!”_

“He had a thing for you since high school,” Geraldine adds, face distant with memories. Joyce can feel the tension spanning across her chest, tightening and squeezing. She can’t take this, she’s going to break down if they keep going, keep labouring her goodness, her kindness. She’s not good, she’s not kind. She’s fucking terrified.

“Yeah, he- uh, he mentioned that,” she manages to get out, looking down at her hands. Then she takes a long gulp of her wine, both to dull the pain racing through her veins and as an excuse to keep from talking further. (She has nothing else she can possibly say.)

“How- how have you been holding up?” Nick asks. His voice is gentle, his eyes quietly searching. Geraldine too turns her watery gaze on her, and then it’s all too much at once-

“I- I-“ Joyce can’t get the words out. She sucks in a breath, almost choking on it. Then she stands up abruptly. “I- I’m sorry- I-“

“Joyce? You okay?” Geraldine asks, her voice cloying even as it drips with sympathy. She stands up too, and then Joyce can’t take it anymore. She flees, stumbling out of the dining room, hurrying into the corridor and falling against the wall with her shaking hand clamped against her mouth. Everything is blurring around her, her pulse thumping against her skull. If she didn’t know what this was, if she hadn’t had them before, she’d think she was dying - and maybe she’d think she deserved it. But as it is the panic attack wracks her body, making her weak and trembling, and without thinking she reaches for the phone on the desk in the hallway.

He answers on the third ring, voice rough and tired. “Hello?”

“Hop,” she manages, between gasping breaths. “I can’t- I-“

“Joyce? You okay?” he asks, voice sharpening over the fuzzy connection.

All she can do is breathe, and try not to pass out.

He seems to recognise the harsh sound, the silent gape of her mouth without even seeing her. “Joyce, I need you to breathe, okay? Can you do that for me? Nice and slow, in and out. Okay?”

His rough baritone is soothing by itself, settling deep in her very bones, and she tries to copy his exaggerated breathing - in, and out, and in, and out. Tries to let his voice alone talk her down. Eventually her breathing slows, the tightness in her lungs begins to ease, though the tremor in her fingers won’t go away.

“Thank you,” she sighs down the line, clutching the phone and bracing herself against the wall. All the energy has been sucked out of her. 

“Joyce- are you okay? Where are you?” he says. His voice is thick with concern.

“I- I’m at Bob’s parents’ house.” It feels like a guilty kind of confession. Calling him, from here - it feels like infidelity, though one man is dead and the other is a thousand miles away. “Sorry- I- I shouldn’t have called.”

“No- I’m glad you did,” he says. “How- how are they?” The words sound heavy and awkward on his tongue.

She closes her eyes, breathes through her nose. “They’re nice, Hop, they’re so fucking _nice-_ I don’t know if I can do this.”

He’s silent, and it occurs to her how fucking stupid- how selfish she’s being. Calling him, whining about her problems like he can fix them, like he hasn’t got enough of his own. Calling and expecting him to save her, when he tried his hardest by begging her to stay and she just wouldn’t listen.

“I- I’m gonna go now,” she says. “I’ll call you tomorrow- Will wants to talk to El- that okay?”

He assents, and then she’s left in the silence, staring at her hands.

—

A few days later she’s sitting at her kitchen table, hunched over her calculator and paperwork with black dread in her heart. The numbers don’t add up, she knows that. It’s right there, in printed black and white - black and white that will soon turn red, bills stamped _overdue_ and interest mounting.

She can barely keep herself and her two boys afloat, let alone a third. There’s no way around it. She puts her head in her hands, tries to calm the sudden pounding of her heart. Fucking Donald- if he hadn’t laid her off-

But there’s no use thinking about that now. All there is to think about is how she’s going to put food on the table.

A thought flits across her mind, barely a suggestion, barely a whisper-

There’s always abortion.

Monica Sinclair had one, she remembers. She told them all at one of Karen’s dinner parties, a girls-only thing (though for Joyce and Claudia it’s always girls-only). Told them how she and her husband had come to the decision together - not out of financial necessity, but just to preserve their existing happiness. Contentment, as a four-person picket fence.

Karen had been shocked, though polite enough to conceal her horror. Claudia - several glasses of wine in - had made some snippy comments, oblivious. But Joyce remained silent, trying to imagine being that content. Secure enough that she could prioritise _happiness_ above all. Stable enough that her husband actually gave a shit.

Monica was quiet for the rest of the evening, an expression of affront on her face. As they were all leaving, Joyce caught her arm and tried to give her a smile. “Don’t listen to Claudia and Karen,” she said quietly. 

Monica looked at her calmly. “I’ve heard much worse.”

Joyce could imagine. Her family is one of three in Hawkins that isn’t white, and while not many dare to be outright racist the conservative attitudes are oppressive in the air. Monica is black and affluent; Joyce is white and poor.

To have an abortion as well-

And, regardless, it’s an expensive business. To pay for the wellbeing of her child in increments, built up over time when she’s found a job and is working double shifts, is quite different to tens of thousands paid upfront. Even if Joyce wants to- feels able to- it’s not gonna work.

She’ll have to find some other way of surviving.

—

Joyce sits at the Newbys’ kitchen table for hours, phone beside her so she can pounce on the first ring. She’s awaiting a call about an apartment, one about an hour away, in Portland. It’s better that way, to be further from all this tangled grief- that is, if she gets the call. If the agent doesn’t look at her, a frazzled single mother of two with no prospects beyond retail, and deny her on sight.

She’s applied for three jobs. They’re nothing fancy - store clerk, barmaid, waitress - but they would be enough. The pay is better in Maine, she’s heard. Big cities, land of opportunity, the works. Here’s hoping it’s not just a pipe dream. 

Nick, who’s still working at seventy-two, offers her a job. He runs bookstores, has three across town, and she really truly considers it - but the guilt is unstoppable. _It was my fault,_ she finds lingering on the tip of her tongue. _Your son is dead because of me._ She wonders what they’d say. If they’d throw her and her sons out on their asses, or just give her that patronising look everyone does. Just Joyce Byers, acting crazy again. Delusional bitch.

Still, she keeps the offer at the back of her mind. She could never accept Nick Newby’s money, but it’s nice to have a safety net, even a false one. Nice to know someone cares, even if it’s born out of a lie. 

Jonathan goes on long drives, often leaving for hours at a time. Joyce worries, as is her wont, but she can’t say anything, she knows she can’t. It would be hypocritical, unfair. She doesn’t know where he goes. She doubts he does either.

Will is quiet, sticking close to her most of the time. Bob’s parents are loud, cheerful even in grief, the type to _make the best of things._ Their presence in the house is overwhelming for Joyce, let alone for Will who prefers quiet even on his better days. He spends hours on drawings, drawings he shields from her view. She’s not sure she wants to know what they are. They could be sentimental, nostalgic, about his friends - that would crush her with guilt. They could be of the monster, the mind flayer - or they could be of Bob, another of the ‘superhero’ drawings he used to make all the time in November. She’s not sure which would be worse, so she lets him have his privacy. It’s all she can really give him, and doesn’t that ache?

Will’s at the table with her now, head buried in paper and crayons. She inspects one with a sigh - it’s getting to be shorter than her little finger, color rubbed down by use. She’s wondering where the nearest stationery shop is when the phone rings. She jumps, the sound sending the old learned panic down her spine, but rushes to answer it anyway.

“Is this Joyce Byers?” It’s a woman, voice cool and professional.

“Yes.” She tries to keep her voice steady.

“Hi, I’m from Ronnie Lewis’ office, I’m calling about the apartment. We’ve had lots of interest, but if you’d like to make an appointment for a viewing on short notice I’m sure we could squeeze you in.”

It’s not promising, in fact it’s condescending. But Joyce will take what she can get.

“Uh, yeah, that would be great, I’m free- I’m free whenever.”

“How about tomorrow afternoon, then? 4:15?”

Joyce agrees, and then that’s that. Onto the next stage, wherein she’ll have to convince this Ronnie Lewis she’s somehow better than all the others, when she’s not even sure she’ll make the rent. But it’s a start.

She goes up to the room she’s been given with a furtive hand on the cigarettes in her pocket. She should really go outside to smoke, but that would mean passing Geraldine in the living room, and she’d ask where she was going, and then look at her with that maternal disapproval-

It’s better for everyone if she does what she’s doing. She shouldn’t, but something about the Newbys makes her feel like a teenager again, makes her feel oppressed and rebellious. She hasn’t had parents since she was nineteen, so Geraldine’s insistent mothering is cloying and unnecessary. (Huh, and she wonders why Will gets so annoyed with her.)

She pushes the window open, as far as it will go, and leans out into the cool evening air. Her room faces out into the garden, luckily. None of the neighboring suburban retirees will see. She’s hurried, guilty about it, huffing out smoke into clouds she hastens to waft away. God, she hasn’t done this since she was sixteen, trying to avoid the wrath of her father. (He hated the clinging, ashy smell, but didn’t seem to mind the ever-present sharp stench of whiskey.)

When she’s done she brushes her teeth - she’s old hat at this - and has a few squares of the chocolate Will brought and forgot about, so the minty smell won’t linger. So the Newbys are none the wiser.

Just another thing she’s hiding from them. Another lie. Life in Maine was meant to be fresh, new, honest - instead she’s constructing it on fragile half truths and anxieties. Like a house of cards that doesn’t even have an ace.

—

She’s beginning to show. It’s slight, incremental, only noticeable because she’s looking for it. She stares at herself in the mirror in only her underwear and tries not to cry, because her body’s going to keep on changing without her permission and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. 

She hated being pregnant with Jonathan. Will too, though times were happier then. She still loved Lonnie; Lonnie still loved her. Still made an effort, still showed up when she needed him to. But with Jonathan, she was a social pariah. Too young, too unmarried. A hurried courthouse wedding to save the scandal. She was lucky, she thinks bitterly, that her dad wasn’t still alive at the time - because she doesn’t like to think what he would have done. Maybe even something violent.

And the pregnancies- they weren’t easy. Her body didn’t like having its organs reshuffled, its nutrients siphoned off. She struggled, was bedridden for weeks before Will was born. And she isn’t twenty-eight anymore. 

She doesn’t want this.

There’s a knock on the front door, loud enough to echo through the empty house. She hurries to put her clothes on, fumbling with the buttons of her shirt, shouting “Coming!” as the knocking continues and not even looking through the peephole before opening the door. Which is a mistake, because it’s Hopper.

She’s been avoiding him, ever since she left him alone and desperate at his cabin that sunny morning. She hasn’t wanted to face him, face his questions. But she supposes she must. She has no choice now.

He brushes past her without asking, looking around the room distractedly before scanning her up and down. There’s something off about his face, something taut and obscure. She meets his gaze wearily, folding her arms over her middle.

“What do you want, Hop?” she asks.

“I- you-“ He flushes slightly, eyes darting away then coming back to hone on her. He gestures to his chest, taps one of the buttons on his shirt, and she looks down at herself to see her shirt gaping wide. Her own cheeks color and she hurries to rectify it - and he looks at her with a trace of disappointment before his face shutters once more.

“Look, if you’re just gonna stare at me in silence-“

“I wanted to come- to see- see if I could tell. See if there was- something different, about you.” He’s rambling, voice the most unsure she’s ever heard it. “I didn’t- I don’t-“

“What? What is it?” she presses, eyes hard. “What-“

“You’re pregnant,” he gasps out. His face is tortured, and he runs a trembling hand through his thin hair. “You’re pregnant. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She sucks in a shaky breath, her heart stuttering in her throat. The words- the words he clearly longs to hear- the words she longs to say- the words won’t come.

He shakes his head. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he says again, almost pleading.

The blood is pounding hot in her ears. She stumbles away from him, steadies herself on the couch. “I can’t,” she whispers, eyes fixed on the floor.

He’s silent, so silent she thinks maybe he’s gone- but then he’s slumping down next to her, head dropping into his hands. “Is it mine?” he mumbles, voice muffled. She almost laughs - when has she had the time to sleep with anyone else? - but instead she just utters a shaky _yes._ “God, Joyce- how long?”

“I don’t know,” she says. By some miracle her voice is clear, unwavering. “I haven’t been to the doctor yet.” In truth she’s been putting it off, unwilling to face reality, but all that’s changing right now, right here in her living room. “As for how long I’ve known-“ She swallows. “The day before we were supposed to leave town.”

“That’s why you stayed,” he croaks. She nods, though she knows he’s not looking at her. “God, why didn’t you tell me? Is this why you ran out on me the other morning?”

She presses her lips together, clenches her fist. “I- I didn’t want it to be true,” she says quietly, voice barely a murmur. “And I didn’t want you to feel like- like you had to be here, to help. I didn’t- I don’t want to put that shit on you.”

She’s startled when he moves from her side to crouch before her on the floor, clutching at her hands with a look so intense it scares her. “Jesus, Joyce, of course I’m here to help. How can you even- of course I have to be here.”

She blinks away sudden, furious tears. “This is exactly why I didn’t- why I didn’t want to tell you. You’re busy, you have El, you have your hands full-“

He looks offended now, eyes sparking with outrage. “What, and you think I wouldn’t want to help? You think I’d rather take the easy way out? You think I’d rather not know?”

She sniffs, wipes at her eyes angrily. “Wouldn’t you?”

“No!” he shouts, the volume startling. She flinches back before she can stop herself and he softens, taking her hands again with a gentle touch. “No, Joyce. This is my kid too. I know we’re not- not together, in that way, but- I want to be here for you. In whatever form that takes. Just don’t- don’t shut me out. Please.” His voice is pleading, begging, and she looks up to see he’s crying too.

Something in her melts, then. She’s been so focused on herself, on money and a job and the panic that’s growing in time with the fetus inside her, that she completely forgot-

Hopper’s not like Lonnie. Maybe there are echoes of him in Hopper - hell, there are echoes of him in every man Joyce has ever met - but Hopper is a good person. He does the right thing. He won’t leave her to struggle, won’t let her and her kids lose the house, won’t let her raise their baby on the streets. Hopper won’t leave her, won’t hit her, won’t call her crazy. Never has.

And, aside from all that-

Hopper had a kid, once. Had a beautiful little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, and a lilting name to match his mother’s. She died, slowly and horribly, and no doubt he never thought he’d have a kid again - maybe never wanted one. Maybe was so scarred from the pain he couldn’t face it ever again. But then there was El, a scared pre-teen who all but fell into his lap-

And he had a kid again, just like that.

And now he’s gonna have another kid again, just like that.

She leans near to him, winds her arms around his neck and holds him close, holds him tight. “God, Hop- I can’t imagine how you- how this must feel.”

She can feel his chest rising and falling against hers, warm and solid and _there_. His own arms shift, moving to clutch at her waist, and she lets herself sink into the embrace, lets the tension finally, _finally,_ seep out of her spine. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to. The closeness is enough.

—

The apartment is nice. Only slightly smaller than their house back in Hawkins, with space enough for each of them to have their own room. It’s not as light or as airy as she might have liked, but the rent’s not bad and it’s only a few blocks from the local middle school. She wants it, wants it so badly her chest aches. If only she can get this apartment, she thinks, everything will work out so much better.

Ronnie Lewis is smart and witty, the charming side of sleazy. He tells her when she arrives _I like to meet all the potential tenants myself_ , suggesting he considers himself a man of importance, yet one that cares enough to do his job correctly. He guides her around the rooms with sweeping gestures and as she looks around, inspects the doors and the carpets and the wallpaper, she becomes aware that he’s inspecting her. Looking at her with appraisal. 

She dressed up, more than usual, for this. Dug out a wrinkled dress in carolina blue, pulled her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. Wanted to look professional, put together. She still doesn’t look great. There are still shadows etched under her eyes, still the faintest of tremors lingering in her hands, and she’s sure she reeks of smoke. But he looks nonetheless, leans close unnecessarily, and, well-

She finds herself enjoying the attention. Men- they don’t look at her all that much anymore, at least in Hawkins. Any good looks she still has are colored by the weight of the gossip about her - crazy, divorced, single mom. But here, here in Maine and here in this apartment, she’s just Joyce. ( _Ms Horowitz,_ Ronnie tried - she’s sick of Lonnie’s name - but she insisted. _Joyce_.)

It’s nearly five when they’re finished, and he eyes her with a smile that could be smarmy but is instead attractive in this light. “You know, there’s a great bar only a few streets away.”

There is, in fact, a great bar only a few streets away. It’s dark but not dank, not a pit like most of the bars in Hawkins. Not like the ones she used to find Lonnie in. (The ones she’s found Hopper in a few times.) Ronnie buys her a whiskey coke which she nurses while he knocks back one, two, three shots (she still has to drive back, later). And then she’s finished her drink, and he’s looking at her with eyes that are wild and bright, and then he kisses her. 

She stiffens, nearly pulls away, but no one is looking up from their drinks, whispering to each other with small town glee. This is the big city, and they’re all strangers. No one cares. No one gives a shit. 

So she kisses back, because she can. And then he’s moving back, face keen- “You wanna get a cab back to my place?”

And she agrees, because the alternative is an evening with the Newbys, and cold, fraught conversation that makes her hands shake. This is better. (This is something she hasn’t done in years.)

He kisses her hard against his doorframe, takes his sweet bloody time about it. She guides him away from her neck when his lips threaten to leave marks - she doesn’t want to have to explain _that_ to the Newbys - and moves her hands to his belt impatiently. He gets the message. He slides his fingers between her legs only cursorily before he fucks her hard - and she finds she prefers that, the hurried carelessness. In their long evenings together Hopper would lavish attention on her like Lonnie never did, and that’s not what she’s looking for. (She’s not sure she could take it, not now, not from somebody else.)

When she comes it’s with a stuttered gasp muffled against her fist. He joins her only a few seconds later, panting above her, and then he rolls over and drops the condom in the trash. (She’s learnt her lesson on that score.) He lies beside her and lights up a cigarette, offering her the pack - she takes one, and is for some reason surprised when she doesn’t choke on it. Almost misses the ashy burn of no filter- but she stops that thought in its tracks. Besides, these are better for her.

She studies the room in the gloomy evening light. It’s well-kept, if sparse. A busy, professional man’s room. Not a slob like Lonnie is, or Hopper used to be. Not someone with quirks and interests, like Bob. Just a man.

He’s looking at her with a glimmer in his eyes. “The apartment’s yours, if you want it,” he says casually around a puff of smoke.

She feels cold.

She didn’t- she hadn’t meant it like that. Like _payment._ Vague nausea rises in her throat at the thought- that that’s what he thinks this is, that that’s _what it is,_ for all intents and purposes. Because she can’t say anything, because she _needs_ this apartment. 

She looks away, takes a long, shaky drag of the cigarette. It’s getting late, and suddenly she doesn’t want to be here anymore, beside this man who appeared to be perfectly respectable. She makes a show of checking her watch. “I should get going,” she says, and reaches for her clothes.

He watches her dress without reservation, puffing on his cigarette thoughtfully. Then he calls her a cab, and pours himself another finger of whiskey while she waits. “I’ll give you a call, about the apartment. Should be able to work out the details pretty quick.”

She nods, not trusting herself to speak. 

“Hey,” he says, brow pulled down in a frown. “This was fun, right? We should do it again sometime.”

She swallows. _Fun._ She should never have trusted someone whose name rhymes with _Lonnie._

She leaves without another word.

—

“How did you know?” she asks him some time later, when they’re sitting at her kitchen table and the trees are darkening under the weight of dusk. “How did you- you were so sure.”

Hopper shrugs. His hands are on the table, at a loss without a cigarette. (She knows the feeling.) He started to get them out before pausing, looking at her searchingly, and put them away again. Solidarity, he called it. It made her chest ache.

“You didn’t have any wine at dinner the other night, and haven’t stolen a single cigarette for over a week. And you- you’ve just been acting… off. Figured there had to be a reason.” He doesn’t meet her eyes, studying a mark on the wood. It’s a testament to how well he knows her, that he sensed she was acting _off._ That something was wrong.

“Anyone would think you were a detective,” she quips lightly, and his gaze flicks up in surprise. Then a small smile comes onto his face.

“Flo would disagree with you,” he replies. “Powell and Callahan too, come to think of it.”

“Well, what do they know?” she says. 

His grin is wry, far off. He’s thinking of other things, she knows. Most likely the life growing within her, budding and flowering into a child. _Their child._

“How are you for money?” he asks abruptly, though not unkindly. She stares at him, defensive hackles rising despite herself. She doesn’t want his money. (No matter how much she might need it.)

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“Joyce-“ he says, in _that_ tone, and there’s another argument brewing. She stares him down furiously. “I’m not suggesting you can’t cope- I’m not trying to take your independence-“

“I just need a job,” she says coldly. “I don’t need your money, I just need to start earning some of my own again.”

He scrubs a hand over his face, and when he takes it away she sees he’s smiling. She glares at him - this isn’t funny, this is serious shit - but his smile just grows wider.

“What?” she snaps finally. He shakes his head, chuckling to himself, and she softens despite herself - because he’s not mocking her. There’s no malice in his face. There’s only something loose and fond, that melts her heart. “What?” she asks again, shyly.

“You’re just so- so fiercely independent. You refuse to accept help from anyone, you always have. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

He stops abruptly, lets out an awkward cough, and she looks at her hands. “Oh,” she says softly.

She can hear him shifting on his chair, the legs squeaking as he moves. The room is terribly silent. As she’s scrambling for something, anything to say, to alleviate the awkward tension that’s settled over them like a stormcloud, he speaks again. “I- um- I could rustle up something for you at the station. There’s not really a vacancy, but I can convince them to up the budget - the pay would be shit, obviously, but-“

“Hop, I’m not asking you to do that,” she says tiredly. “I’m not gonna work for you- what would I even do-“

His eyes are bright, animated. “You could be a secretary. Flo’s gonna retire any moment now anyway, we’ve got bets on when she’s-“

“Hop,” she says again, more firmly. “I can’t work for you.” She doesn’t want to work for him, although her mind is conjuring up treacherous images of morning coffee, conspiring together over his desk, maybe doing indiscreet things with the door locked- 

(That’s one of the reasons they definitely, absolutely, clearly should not work together.)

He sighs a little ruefully. “Right. Of course not. But if you do need help-“

“Which I don’t.”

“-call me. Anytime, about anything.”

She nods, bites her lip. The tension from earlier is still there, still hanging thick and hot in the air, still making her pulse race for reasons she’s not so sure she’s ready to face. She can feel him watching her across the table. Then he takes her hand, fingers sliding under hers and thumb rubbing circles on her skin. The touch doesn’t feel anything other than gentle, natural - but it sends a shock through her anyway.

“I- um, I’d like to be there. At the doctor’s. Even if it’s just to drive you or something.“

“Okay,” she says. There’s no point fighting him on everything, not when he seems determined. He wants to be here, which makes a change for most people in her life- so she’ll let him. If nothing else, she doesn’t have the energy to argue.

He looks surprised, but happy - almost childlike. This must be what he looked like with Diane, when it was her he was taking to the doctor. Younger, clean shaven, a hell of a lot more ignorant about the horrors the world had in store - but the same paternal hope in his eyes. 

She smiles at him, squeezes his hand. The panic, the fear- it’s sure to return later, in the dark of her room without so much as a cigarette to calm her, but for now her thoughts are quiet. Where before she had to fuck him for a reprieve-

Now all it takes is holding his hand.

—

They move into the new apartment a few days after that. A weight is lifted off her chest, off all their chests, at the departure from the Newbys’ house. Joyce watches them disappear in her rearview mirror with not a small amount of relief.

And Jonathan, Will - they both seem happier here. Brighter. Jonathan makes breakfast each morning, cooks up eggs in a pan that they eat sitting on the countertops, because she has yet to be able to afford the freight of the furniture. Will sings along to Queen songs on the radio that Jonathan rolls his eyes at.

Yet Joyce- Joyce can’t shake the sick feeling in her heart. Can’t help but feel like all this - such as it is - will be ripped away soon enough. Leave them scrambling for stability once again.

And that fear just makes her feel worse, because this was _her fucking idea._ The boys didn’t want to leave, they made that clear. She knows with a mother’s intuition that they could both be happy here - it’s certainly a new start for Will, who if nothing else was still being bullied relentlessly at school in Hawkins. Here he’s not Zombie Boy, Jonathan’s not a freak, she’s not out of her fucking mind. 

But she still feels nauseous.

Ronnie Lewis makes it worse. His visits are short but frequent - _how are you settling in?_ \- and it’s not like she can turn him away at the door. (The landlord’s some big businessman, owns forty properties in Portland, Augusta, Bangor, so it’s the agent’s job to keep a wary eye. A lecherous one.) He makes passes, subtle suggestions with the glimmer of his eyes and the brush of his hand, which she always refuses. And he lets her, for now. Lets it go with smooth composure. But she knows it’s a matter of time - how long before he decides she owes him again? Before their rent, their very fucking _home,_ becomes a pimp’s trading chips?

It’s enough to make her want to weep, break down and fucking cry her eyes out, call Hopper and let him talk her through it, maybe even let him drive out here and beat the crap out of the guy. Because she knows he would. He’s always had a keen sense of honour, even in high school when the guys he was scorning were only slightly more obnoxious than he was himself. He would drive day and night for her, she knows this as a certain fact.

And then she thinks: oh _shit._ Because what the fuck has she done? She left Hawkins, left El, left _Hopper,_ and for what? For a crummy apartment and the creep who’s renting it to her, for loneliness and dissatisfaction.

And so the anxious, nauseous cycle goes. She’s made a habit out of flicking Hopper’s lighter, clicking it between her hands as some kind of nervous tic. It doesn’t help, really, and it pisses Jonathan off, but she can’t stop herself. Imagines it in Hop’s pocket in high school, Vietnam, New York, the hospital where his daughter died. All the landmarks of his life. 

And now it’s hers, and doesn’t that make her want to weep?

They have neighbors in the apartment opposite. Another family - parents and a girl Will’s age. They brought flowers and a bottle of wine their first night, the girl showed Will her watercolor set, and just like that they assimilated themselves into the Byers’ lives.

One day she’s in the laundry room in the basement, sorting the whites from the colors, when Linda comes in behind her, arms laden with linens. She dumps them atop one of the machines and turns to Joyce with purpose.

“Have you thought about enrolling Will in school yet? I know it’s still June but you really have to get the application in, they’re very oversubscribed in this area-“

“It’s on my to-do list,” she responds with a tight smile. It seems she’s doomed to attract the Karen-Wheeler type of busybody wherever she goes.

“Good,” Linda says decisively, turning back to her laundry. Then she halts, looking around with a furrowed brow. “I know you don’t like me.”

Joyce stares, stutters a little. “What- I-“

“No, it’s okay. Interfering neighbor, prying when you’ve just moved in. I get it. I just- I wanna look out for you, you know? Portland’s a big city, dangerous if you’re alone. I saw Ronnie’s been taking an interest.”

She swallows, even as internally she’s bristling at the implication that she can’t protect herself and her sons. “You know Ronnie?”

“Oh, he’s the agent for the entire building. Bit of a creep, once you get to know him. Notice most of the tenants are women without husbands. You should be careful. He’s made a habit out of charming them into bed.”

 _Little bit fucking late for that,_ she thinks. _Lonnie did always say I was a slut._ “Um, thanks,” she manages, though some part of her refuses the implication that her sex life is any of this woman’s business. 

“Oh, that’s okay. We women have to look out for each other,” Linda replies, and touches Joyce’s shoulder in a move she probably considers comforting. It’s not, and Joyce has to restrain herself from flinching away. There’s something about this woman, this family - something too polished, too perfect. Maybe she’s crazy. 

Maybe the man in the black sedan meant nothing, either.

But Joyce doesn’t do well with trust.

—

She puts off talking to the boys for as long as she can. It’s built up in her head, like some catastrophic eventuality that will tear her family apart. In the end it’s not nearly so bad as that, but it still takes her a full three weeks. The curve of her belly is more noticeable now, but hidden under her usual baggy clothes. Luckily. And Karen’s kept her mouth shut, surprisingly, so-

The boys have no idea.

(She sees suspicion in Jonathan’s face one night when he looks at the ashtray on the table that’s been clean for weeks, but she doubts he’d connect the dots - he’s busy, a teenager, a boy. It’s not something he’d notice, not the way Karen did, not the way Hop did.)

Hopper has inserted himself into her life, their lives, almost seamlessly, and she lets him. It’s nice to have someone to lean on - someone she doesn’t have to feel guilty about leaning on (because at the end of the day Jonathan is her son). Hopper stays true to his word, sticks by her side with his presence as a silent assurance, She gets the sense he’s waiting for something. What, she doesn’t know - for her to kiss him, or send him away. She does neither (although the former is all too tempting), because right now all she needs is the calm of his steady eyes.

So when she does talk to her boys, he’s not invited. She does it alone.

She sits them down when she gets back from work one day, so she doesn’t have the chance to chicken out. (She’s got a job now, managing a shoe store part-time at the mall. It’s actually an upgrade from Melvald’s, with its shitty pay and lack of promotions, but if she can’t get full-time it won’t be nearly enough.) She stops Jonathan as he’s moving away to his room, motions with her head to the kitchen table. “Can you get your brother? I need to talk to you both.”

He nods, eyes a little apprehensive. _Talks_ have never meant anything good in their family - divorce, unemployment, supernatural monsters. Still, he does as he’s asked. And then they’re both sitting across from her, her boys, the dearest things she has. Looking at her with concern.

“I- um, I have something to tell you. And I promise you, this isn’t going to change anything too much- money might be tight for a while, but we’ll manage, like we always have. And I need you both to know I love you more than anything in the world, and this doesn’t change that.”

“Mom-“ Will starts, and there’s real, tangible fear in his face. “What’s going on?”

She takes a deep breath. _Here it is._

“I’m pregnant.”

By some miracle, her voice is steady. Will just stares at her, eyes wide, but Jonathan’s expression shutters into a frown. 

“Whose is it?” he asks, and there’s the scepticism bleeding into his voice that she dreaded.

“Jonathan-“

“Whose is it?” he repeats with narrowed eyes. When she doesn’t answer, he looks away and mutters accusingly: “Is it the Chief’s?”

She swallows. He’s heard the rumors, then, the gossip - spiteful or otherwise - that flies around town. Or maybe she’s being unfair. Maybe he’s just noticed- noticed that frisson of _something_ that hangs in the air between them, though she’s been trying her hardest to ignore its existence. 

Her silence is confirmation enough. Jonathan scoffs and stands up, and she can see him shutting down, pulling away from her. This- this is exactly what she was afraid of. He’s always been harder to read than Will, harder to talk to, harder to convince. Will, now, is looking up at his brother with startled eyes, but there’s no hostility in the line of his jaw. He likes Hopper, she remembers. Looks up to him, like he never could to Lonnie. 

She stands up too. “Jonathan- wait-“

“What, so he’s supposed to be our new dad? You gonna marry him? Or is he leaving you to raise it on your own? Dumping this kid on you-“

“It’s not like that!” she cries. She has to make him understand- “He’s not Lonnie, I promise you he’s not. I wouldn’t do that to you again.”

Jonathan visibly deflates. “Mom-“ He shakes his head. “It’s you I’m worried about. You know he- he’s got a reputation, around town.”

_So have I,_ she thinks, even as her heart breaks. He’s only trying to protect her, both her heart and her honor. She couldn’t ask for better sons. “Gossip can be cruel,” she says. “And I’m not marrying him, Jonathan. It’s not like that.”

“So he’s not gonna be our new dad?” Will’s voice is small, some sad hope lingering in his eyes. He sounds younger than his fourteen years - still just a kid, waiting for his father to come home. She takes his hand and squeezes.

“No, he’s not,” she answers. It’s surprisingly difficult to say it, to get the words out. Because (and this is something she doesn’t want to think about, something that’s still only a shadow at the back of her mind) maybe that would be nice. To have a partner, a man who isn’t an utter asshole for her kids to look up to. Someone to share her bed and cook her breakfast. Give Jonathan girl advice, give Will driving lessons when the time comes. (She taught Jonathan herself, and she considers it a minor miracle they both survived.)

“So we’re gonna have a baby sibling,” Jonathan says, with tired disbelief, but at least he doesn’t sound so overtly negative anymore.

“I know this must be weird for you - it’s weird for me.” She comes around the table and touches his shoulder, and he looks down - down! - at her with the hint of a smile. (It seems like yesterday he was a head shorter than her, and with Will it’s even stranger as the inches between them climb. Her boys, growing up.) The smile - that’s a relief that loosens her lungs so suddenly that she feels lightheaded. And Will’s even looking vaguely excited, now, most likely at the prospect of no longer being the baby of the family. Whatever the reason, it gives her heart. That maybe this won’t be so disastrous after all.

—

She first suspects there’s something wrong, really _wrong,_ about their neighbors when she catches the girl, Lily, taking photos of Will. And not staged, joking shots like he takes with his friends sometimes - these are candid, catching him unaware. It’s all she can do to stop herself from going over there, tearing the camera right out of the girl’s hands, like she’d so desperately like to. It’s just innocent, she tells herself. Perhaps the girl’s got a crush.

But then when Linda invites herself over for coffee Joyce finds her looking over the papers on the counter, before she can hastily tidy them away. The woman looks at her with eyes that are too keen for her face, too sharp, eyes she’s seen in faces like Brenner’s. 

Or maybe she’s paranoid. 

But she lies awake at night in the room that still doesn’t feel like her own and stares up at the hairline cracks in the ceiling. She lets her cigarette smoke drift in curls above her, lets the ashy burn fill her lungs until she’s lightheaded. And the tiny, slightest suggestion of an idea blooms at the back of her mind. It’s not like she hasn’t thought of it before, of course she has-

But the very prospect-

Going back on everything she’s strived so hard to defend, to rationalise, both to herself and her sons-

She can’t go back to Hawkins.

Can she?

The addition of a question mark to that statement is several degrees beyond what she’s considered before. It’s the opening of a door, a gate leading back down the path she didn’t choose all those weeks ago. Could she go back? She supposes she could, with the swallowing of pride and the squeezing of finances. If she told Will and Jonathan they were going, just like that, they’d probably pack their bags as fast as they could in case she changed her mind.

God, she’s made some awful mistakes. More than just the move - though that might be her largest to date - but Lonnie, and involving Bob in the Lab’s fucking mess, and dropping out of college that first semester when she was nineteen. (She’d barely managed to afford it as it was, and then her dad got sick and there was no one else, and when he died in the spring it was too late and too expensive to go back.) Her laundry-list of wrongdoings is nauseating.

These thoughts don’t get far beyond her sleepless nights. During the day she stays busy - she has her shifts waitressing at a diner only a few blocks away, now, and when she’s not there she tries to keep the boys occupied. Tries to make Portland into a place they can be happy - a home. 

They get to know the local movie theatre, the local arcade, the cheaper of the local restaurants. Portland is nicer than Hawkins, she knows that. Will raves about all the machines at the arcade that she doesn’t understand, all the different movies they show that they never had on ‘back home’. (She doesn’t correct his slip.) And Jonathan’s found a record store only a street away, tucked in between two crummy apartment blocks, and she doesn’t begrudge him when he blasts New Order’s new album late at night. The lyrics of one song stick with her a little too close, a little too deep, and she finds them racing around her brain when she’s walking down the street, cooking them dinner.

_You search for the life you need to find, there’s right and there’s wrong, and there’s good and there’s bad, and there’s an answer to this I wish I had._

Because all she wants is to live a good life, a better one, her and her sons together. One where they can be happy, because they’ve had enough of heartbreak. But after all this she’s no closer to finding it. No closer to the answer, although she knows there has to be one. 

She keeps on tracing her fingers over Hopper’s initials at the base of his lighter, flicking it open and watching the steady flame in the dark. And then the thought occurs to her, suddenly and without warning-

The happiest she’s felt, the happiest she’s really, truly felt in a long time-

The closest to an _answer_ she’s ever had-

It’s when Hop and El are at her dinner table. 

Well.

—

Joyce wakes to silent, still darkness. She lies there for a moment, unsure what woke her - because there’s not a sound in the corridor outside, or the rooms beyond. There’s no fear constricting her lungs, and her sleep for once was deep and dreamless.

Then she hears a sound beside her, and she turns to see Hopper’s outline trembling in the gloom. “Hop,” she whispers, touches his shoulder, but he doesn’t respond. He’s still asleep, she sees. Trapped in a fit of nightmares.

“Hopper,” she says again, louder. His nightmares aren’t like her own, she notices. Often she’s woken to find Jonathan standing over her, hands still resting on her shoulders after shaking her awake, because her screams disturbed him and Will. No, Hopper is silent, frozen, rigid. If not for the sweat on his temples and the tremor in his hands, fisted in the sheets, she’d have no idea. His jaw clenched so tight he could break his teeth.

“Hopper,” she tries over and over, resorting to shoving at his arm. She can only imagine what horrors are on show behind his eyes - the bloody terror of Vietnam, that she can scarcely imagine? The raw grief of Sara, that she doesn’t dare to? Or something closer to home? The same horrific images that haunt her, night after night?

Finally, he wakes with a hoarse, raw cry. He drags himself upright, doesn’t look at her as his shoulders continue to shake. “Hopper-“ she starts abortively. She touches his arm and he flinches away. She stares at him for a few moments at a loss, frightened by the blankness that has settled on his features. “Hey, you’re okay.” She places her hand on his shoulder, and when he doesn’t flinch again she counts it as a victory.

And then there’s a sound, like the groan of a wounded animal, and belatedly she realises it’s a sob rising in his throat. “Joyce-“ he whispers brokenly, and she inches closer so she’s pressed against his side.

“You had a nightmare?” she says, nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder. And it comes to her attention - suddenly, without warning - that she’s not afraid, not alarmed by this fit of alienation. He’s a big man, he could crush her without breaking a sweat, yet even in the throes of night terror-induced panic he maintains a safe, tragic distance. He protects her, even now.

“Yeah,” he manages. “You- Joyce-“ He goes silent for a moment, his eyes finally meeting hers. They’re shining with as yet unshed tears in the dim light. “You’re okay? The baby?”

She swallows a painful lump in her throat. The baby- any mention of it, and something harsh constricts her breathing. Still, she nods in the dark. “We’re okay, Hop, we’re all okay. You’re okay.”

Without warning, he throws his arms around her waist and buries his head in her shoulder, seeking the comfort he never would in daylight. She lets him do it, draws him closer and rubs a hand over his back while he cries like a child. Everything is secondary, when someone else needs her. One of her people. Will, or Jonathan, or El, or Hopper. She can ignore the panic that permanently flutters in her chest and allow herself to melt against Hopper, as he clings to her like a lifeline.

“I dreamt about Sara,” he whispers into her skin. “She’s gone- I lost her- what if I lose you?”

“You’re not gonna lose me, Hop,” she says firmly, steadfastly, pulling back to stare into his eyes. “I promise, you’re not gonna lose me.”

He looks at her with eyes that are blank and disbelieving. “Joyce- our kid- _our kid-“_

“Shh,” she says, because it’s all she can say. “Shh, hey, it’s okay.”

For some reason he believes the worst is about to happen- that she, and their child, is seconds away from slipping through his fingers like ash. And maybe she too can feel some of that heaviness in her bones. Can feel the worry, the sick feeling that is forever associated with Will but also with Jonathan and this kid, as yet unnamed. But right now she can’t think like that. Can’t let the anxiety take over. She has to stay calm, and rational, and believe that all this will be fine in the end.

Eventually his tears dry up, and they fall asleep curled together under the sheets. He’s warm and solid and doesn’t seem to want to let go of her, so she falls into his embrace like it’s the last piece of the puzzle. Like she loves him. (And maybe- no- but maybe- no- maybe she does.)

The next morning he kisses her on the cheek before he leaves to go to work, and she blushes like a teenager, and it feels like they’ve been married ten years. Like maybe some good can come of this. Some happiness.

And she goes to her shift with a smile on her face, and Jonathan’s promise that he’ll bring her lunch. (She wouldn’t ask him to, but he insists.) Her shift is long and boring, a slow day, but she doesn’t care. She’s busy thinking of the _ifs,_ all the romantic possibilities she hasn’t dared to consider in years. The avenues she might go down, if she were brave enough. And maybe, just maybe, she is.

At midday she takes her lunch break and waits outside for Jonathan. He’s a little late and her fingers are beginning to itch for the easy release of a smoke, more out of habit than any real dependence anymore, and she’s thinking maybe she should quit for good even when the nine months are over, when she gets the sudden, horrible feeling that _something is wrong._

It starts with an abrupt swooping feeling in her chest, like when she’s about to have a panic attack, but she just knows this is the precursor to something much worse. Something that makes her hands shake. And then the pain hits.

It’s bright white, hot and blinding, making her double over in agony. She’s gasping from it, unable to speak even when there’s someone leaning in front of her with a concerned expression. “Ma’am? Are you alright?” he’s saying, but she can’t respond.

And then he’s shoved aside and replaced by Jonathan’s anxious eyes. Her boy, who crouches before her and takes her arms. “Mom? Mom, can you hear me?”

She falls into him, lets him hold her upright as all the strength seeps out of her. “Drive me to the hospital,” she manages to get out, because she can’t afford an ambulance. He nods tightly and guides her to her feet as she’s shaking and silent, and her heart is heavy. Because she can feel the hot drip of blood down her thighs, and even as Jonathan whispers assurances, breaks dozens of traffic laws as he races to the hospital, she knows it’s too late.

—

She’s woken late one night by the cry of her son. It echoes through the walls, paper-thin, reedy and panicked - “El!” - and she’s out of bed in a flash. (They say parenthood makes you a light sleeper, and it’s true her senses are attuned to her son’s voice even in sleep, probably even in death, but she’s always had insomnia.)

Will’s room is next to hers. Jonathan is close behind her as she enters, the headphones slung hastily around his neck telling her he hadn’t yet gone to bed. “Will!” she calls, hurrying to his bedside. Her youngest is already awake, shaking with wide eyes in the gloom. She touches his cheek, looks back at Jonathan, but Will seems okay- seems _himself,_ which is all she can ask for. “Hey, you okay?”

He nods. “Mom, I saw El. We talked- but then she disappeared-“

“It’s just a dream, sweetie, you’re okay.”

He shakes his head, looking more urgent now. “It wasn’t just a dream, Mom, it was different. Everything was dark and empty, and she was there, and it- it felt _real._ She said they’re in trouble, that the Lab’s reopening-“

She spares another glance for Jonathan, who’s frowning with a mixture of worry and scepticism. She’d be perfectly within her rights to dismiss it as a dream, to tell him to roll over and go back to sleep. God knows they’re all tired enough. But some part of her-

Some part of her recognises the candid desperation in her son’s eyes. It’s like looking in a mirror. 

“Did she say anything else?” she says, moving to sit on the side of the bed. Will brightens, but she can feel Jonathan’s uncertainty. 

“No- she disappeared before she could get a chance.” He stares at her, tangible fear in his eyes. “What if something’s happened to her? To everyone in Hawkins?”

“It’s just a dream, Will.” Jonathan’s voice is tired, but Will’s not looking at him. His gaze remains fixed on her, begging, pleading. _I need you to believe me. Please. Please._

“Alright,” she says quietly, and stands up. “I’m gonna make a phone call.”

“Mom-“ Jonathan starts, but she’s already moving out to the corridor, to the phone in the wall. Then she picks up, dials, the number as familiar as the pattern of initials on a lighter. And it rings.

And rings. And rings. And rings out, because no one answers. She tries again, because it’s the middle of the night - maybe they’re just asleep - to no response. Hopper and El aren’t there.

And she thinks- okay. Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation. Maybe El’s at a sleepover with one of the other kids. Maybe Hopper’s working late at the station. Maybe he’s found another woman to warm his bed. (The thought makes her bitter stomach turn.) Or maybe something’s happened- something terrible.

She takes out a cigarette, uses Hopper’s zippo to light it. Traces the engravings, the scuffs, the scratches in it almost unconsciously. She can believe her son, believe her own fucking instincts in the kind of leap of faith that gets her called _crazy,_ and go back to Hawkins, to El, to Hopper- or she can stay here with her safety and dignity intact. (Her safety - her family’s safety - but are they really safe? Are her neighbors - Linda and Lily and Jack - Lab people too?)

Put like that-

She’s never been one to take the easy way out.

—

When it’s all over, she lies on her bed and has a lazy, empty cigarette. She stares up at the smoke curling in the air, at the gray foamboard tiles, at the steady fluorescent strip light, and realises-

She feels nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s like an empty space has been carved out where her heart, her soul, her _grief_ should be. She feels nothing but hollow inside.

The door opens, and her gaze flicks downward to see Hopper hesitating in the doorway. There’s a kind of desperate uncertainty to the slope of his shoulders, the taut line of his jaw. He doesn’t want it to be true. He wants her to show him the growing swell of her abdomen, hold his hand and ask him to rebuild the old flatpack cot - but that’s all over now.

She doesn’t say anything, only takes another bitter drag of her cigarette, and that tells him all he needs to know. His face crumples.

She struggles to sit up, but then there’s a stab of searing pain and she gasps, and Hopper’s by her side in an instant. He lowers himself into the chair, taking her hand - and she notices he’s shaking.

“Are you okay?” he asks lowly, raggedly. 

She nods in silence.

“What-“ He’s struggling to get the words out. “What was it? Was it a boy, or-“

Her face twists. This- this will be the hardest part for him, she knows. Her voice is barely a whisper. “It was a girl.” She sits up further, gritting her teeth through the pain, and squeezes his hand. “Hop- I’m so sorry-“

He all but falls into her shoulder, just as he did the previous night, but now everything is different. All he feared, all he dreamt about- it’s real. And she can’t do anything, can’t say anything to make it better- all she can do is hold him and not let go. He’s sobbing, shaking against her, and she whispers apologies over and over again into his thinning hair. 

Her own eyes remain dry. Her stare is bitter and blank, fixed on a point somewhere over his shoulder, on the same awful tiling she got to know so well from the long awful hours spent by Will’s bedside that first awful time. Maybe she’s been through too much. Maybe the cumulative weight of everything, all the shit that’s built up since she was just a kid, has finally made her snap. Broken her. Maybe she’s cried so much she’s got no tears left.

Maybe that’s why all this has happened. Because somehow her body knew she didn’t have the emotion to spare. Though that’s not quite true- she would have loved this child with her every fibre, without question. This child would never, not for a single second, have been deprived of love, of care, of affection. But the cost- the financial, the physical, the mental cost-

And yet. She can’t help but think of what might have been. A child, a little girl, with her dark hair and Hopper’s blue eyes. Her kindness and none of her anxiety, Hopper’s bravery and none of his hotheadedness. Will would teach her to draw, and Jonathan would show her his record collection. El would amaze her by making things float. (‘Frivolous use of powers’ be damned.)

But she shakes these thoughts off - she has to. All that’s over now. Another future not to be.

Hopper’s gone quiet in her arms, and finally he meets her eyes with a loaded sort of grief. “Joyce-“ he rasps, his baritone cracking like glass. “I-“

“What?” she whispers. She’s not sure she can take anything else.

“Fuck- does it hurt?”

It seems like he’s avoiding something, flickering away from some information or confession. But she can’t press him, not now. Of course she can’t. So she just lets the twisted, complicated feeling inside her show on her face. “It did - but it’s okay now. I’m okay.”

It was the wrong thing to say. He looks away, face crumpling, and for a moment she hates him for it - because she’s okay, and their kid isn’t. Their little girl. And he doesn’t want it that way, he wants his little girl back. (Sara or the unnamed one, she’s not entirely sure.) And she wants to scream, _aren’t I enough? Was I never enough?_

But she doesn’t, because that’s unfair, that’s cruel, uncalled for. A child- it defies description, logic. It transcends _enough._

So she lets him cry a little more, and she lets him share her cigarette, and then she lets him leave. She lets him leave, watches him walk away from her with still-shaking shoulders, because she can’t make him stay. And if this pushes him away from her forever- if this tears them apart completely and entirely-

Well, she’s not sure what she’ll do, but maybe in some twisted part of her brain she’ll think she deserves it.

—

After a long, dull, painful journey, they arrive back in Hawkins. It hasn’t changed. The same streets, the same dull faces on Main Street. Like it was in stasis, just waiting for her to return and resume her old life. Like Portland was just a brief interlude.

She goes straight to Hopper’s door. She knocks with desperate trepidation, hoping against hope there’s an answer, with her sons like nervous guards on either side-

And then the door opens,

—

After maybe a week of silence, of staring at walls and letting Will’s specially-made cups of tea go cold, there’s a knock on her door one dim evening. She wraps her robe around herself more tightly - she’s been all but living in her pyjamas - and goes to answer it. There’s another rapid knock and she jumps, nervous all of a sudden. It could be anyone. It could be no one.

She opens the door,

—

and it’s Hopper.

—

He stares at her, like he can’t quite believe it. Like he doesn’t think she’s real.

“Joyce?” he croaks. He steps out, reaches out a hand as if to touch her then retracts it just as fast. “How- what are you doing here?”

She looks up at him with trepidation. Suddenly, now that she’s here, all her courage has deserted her. He’s standing right there, he’s clearly okay, hasn’t been taken or murdered by the Lab- 

And she probably looks like a grade A moron. 

Then Will pushes past her, stares up at him with round, hopeful eyes. “Is El here? Is she okay?”

Hopper moves aside with a gruff look, that softens as he looks at her son. “Yeah, kid, she’s fine. Go, she’s inside.”

Will doesn’t need to be told twice. He hurries in, and after a wary look Jonathan follows, perhaps sensing the catharsis that’s brewing between the adults. The storm that threatens to descend.

“Hopper-“

God, there are so many things she has to say. So many things she wants to, and so many things she doesn’t. Explanations are owed, and apologies, and a million things in between. But he’s looking at her with a rawness that holds her tongue, a rawness that brings her to tears- so all she does is look up at him with uncharacteristic, unwilling desperation. 

“Hop, I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

She hates it, hates the words as they trip off her tongue, hates begging and pleading for charity. But it’s true. They have nowhere else to go. The house is long sold, and none of them can face another night in a motel. Will, she knows, would rather sleep in the car - sleep on the streets, even. God.

His face wilts, the hard edges softening into gentle concern. Not pity, though god knows she could forgive him for that. She’s in a pitiable state. He draws her inside and sets up a bed for Will, leaves the couch for Jonathan. He doesn’t ask her where she wants to sleep, and she doesn’t tell him. It’s unspoken.

And when Will and El are asleep, and Jonathan’s meeting with Nancy for the first time in weeks, they sit down at the kitchen table together and share a smoke, just like they used to. Just as if everything is normal.

“Hop-“ she says, quietly and brokenly. “God, I’ve made such a fucking mess of things.”

He doesn’t say anything, only stares at her as the smoke drifts upwards in wispy curls towards the ceiling. He doesn’t offer her the cigarette, so she has to reach over and take it. The brush of their fingers is fierce, and hot, and painful. He pulls away like it burns.

“God, I’m so fucking sorry. You have to believe that I- I thought I was doing the right thing. Really, I did.” She doesn’t lift her gaze from the table, traces the knots in the scuffed, cheap wood. “At the end of the day, it was stupid, and selfish, and I wish to god I hadn’t done it.”

He lets out a long, ashy sigh. “Joyce, you were just looking out for your family the best way you knew how. I can’t fault that.” He looks down too, and his voice becomes little more than a whisper. “Much as I want to.” 

“I missed you,” she breathes out, the words slipping out involuntarily. But it’s true, she did. She really fucking missed him. She missed the solid warmth of his presence, the way he towers over her, the way she feels safe around him. The way he can make her smile, make her laugh, though he hasn’t done so yet.

His gaze snaps up to meet hers, intent and serious. “Joyce- I gotta know, why did you come back? You were long gone, you were settled-“

She scoffs. “Settled? Sure, we had an apartment, I had a job, but we weren’t settled. Will and Jonathan- they were bored, lonely- the landlord’s agent was a sleaze-“

He frowns at that, but she barrels on. She doesn’t want to unpack the Ronnie story, doesn’t want his jealous chivalry to derail what should be no more than a frank apology. 

“And then Will- he had this dream, about El. He thought you both were in trouble.” She holds his gaze, holds her breath. “Was he right?”

Hop is silent for a moment, eyes flickering away, taking a drag of the cigarette that’s nearly burnt out. 

“I tried calling here,” she presses. “No one answered.”

He sighs, rubs his beard in a nervous gesture she knows by heart, would know blind. “Yeah, uh, I guess he was right. Had a bit of a scare, about a week ago. The Lab’s reopening, we had some officials snooping around town, so El and I had to go to ground for a bit.”

Will was right, _Will was right,_ and Joyce is fucking glad she’s got good intuition. “I think there were people from the Lab following us,” she quietly confesses. He suddenly looks a hundred times more alert. “Some guy in a black sedan on the journey east, and then I think our neighbors were spying on us.”

“Shit, Joyce,” he says gravely, but this is the first time in ages she hasn’t had to turn this over and over in her mind alone. She feels strangely light, free, even as logically she knows things are just getting worse. Because yes, she’s brought her sons back to the belly of the beast. But she knows they weren’t safe in Maine - she _knows_ that - and at least here they have support. Here they’re not alone, all alone in the big bad world. Here, Hopper’s hands and eyes are all too warm.

And then he does something unexpected. He moves closer, takes her hand willingly, gently, clutches it tight like he doesn’t want to let go, and looks her straight in the eyes. “I missed you too,” he says. “God, Joyce, you don’t know how much I missed you.”

 _I do,_ she thinks. _I really fucking do._

His lips, when he kisses her, are just as soft as she remembered.

—

He stares at her like she’s a stranger, making her shift uneasily under his gaze. He looks rough, rougher than he did in the hospital a week ago. His beard is becoming straggled and untamed, his eyes are shadowed and bloodshot. Still, she thinks, he can’t look worse than she does. 

“Joyce- hey,“ he says. His voice is low and hoarse, and there’s something soothing about it even as she dreads what he might say next. 

“Hey,” she responds hesitantly, standing aside to let him in. “Hop-“

He holds up a hand, silencing her, his eyes grave. “I- uh- there’s something I have to tell you.”

She stares at him, already shaking her head, already with bile rising in her throat. The way he’s acting- it can’t be good. Could be something catastrophic. And she’s not sure she can take anything else.

“The Lab- Hawkins Lab- it’s reopened. It’s back.”

“What?” she whispers, her voice cracking on the simple syllable. He nods, continues to confirm her worst fears.

“I should have been here for you, this week, but when I found out about the Lab I had to make sure El was safe-“

“No, of course,” she says. El’s safety is paramount, tantamount. Her own guilty depression pales by comparison. “God, Hop, what does this mean?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

She takes out an anxious cigarette with trembling fingers. (Smoking, it seems, is all she’s been doing for the past seven days.) Hopper moves forward to light it without a word and she tries her best to enjoy his warmth before he inevitably pulls away.

What a reversal this is, she thinks. A few short weeks ago she was pushing him away, ignoring his calls, leaving him in an empty bed - and now she’d do anything for a warm, forgiving smile sent her way.

The silence is becoming too loaded, so she grasps for something, anything to say. She settles on the words that are burgeoning on her tongue, begging to spill out. The truth. “God, Hopper, I’m so sorry.”

His gaze snaps to hers with a fierceness she hadn’t expected. His jaw tightens, his brow furrows, and if he was Lonnie she’d think he was about to hit her. But he isn’t, and he’s not, and he would never. “Joyce, don’t- don’t apologise. This wasn’t your fault, okay? I don’t blame you- I would _never-“_

Suddenly it’s difficult to breathe. “You don’t?” she repeats, and maybe there’s too much scepticism bleeding into her tone, because his wide hands come up to cradle her face with a kind of desperation.

“Of course I don’t, Joyce, I-“

And there are words, blooming on his face like ill-fated roses, that she knows he’s about to say. Words that maybe she’d like to hear, words that might ease some of the loneliness that clogs in her heart. But these are words he shouldn’t say now, even if he means them. One thing at a time.

So she kisses him, to get him to shut up. Kisses him, because she’s wanted to do it for a week now. (And longer.) He’s warm, soft, pliant, and for once this doesn’t feel like denial. It feels like coming home.

—

When they’ve moved apart (mutually - neither of them seemed to want to pull away first) he looks at her with weary, awfully gentle eyes. And though his forehead is marred by fresh worry lines, though her own eyes are dark and sunken, she feels lighter than she has in ages. They’re here together, and she’s not going to let them fall apart again. No matter what life throws at them. No matter what happens. And if Brenner, if the demogorgon, if the shadow monster comes back to haunt them?

Let them come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- the new order lyrics are from sooner than you think, from their album low-life, released on May 13th 1985. the perfect soundtrack to jonathan’s angst.
> 
> as with the black sedan, i wanted to keep their neighbors ambiguous, to share in that atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion. you don’t know whether joyce is right or if she’s just inventing reasons to go - maybe a bit of both.
> 
> i had fun writing bob’s parents, and of course joyce’s reaction to them. i do fundamentally think that joyce wouldn’t have been as happy as you’d think if bob had lived and they’d moved to maine, as i tried to express with how his parents make her feel like a ‘rebellious teenager’ again. they’re _too_ pastel-pink, too nice and ordinary for her - at least now, after all she’s been through. i do think in that respect it’s why she and hopper are so perfect for each other.
> 
> the miscarriage might be an unpopular ending, especially given the prevalence of baby fics in this fandom, but honestly i’ve never been a fan of them and i think ultimately this way both joyce & hop will be happier in the long run. i really can’t see them wanting another kid, which is why the revelation is so earth-shattering here, and you can see the impact it has on both of their mental healths. of course that kid would probably have been the most loved kid on the planet, but i just couldn’t see it working out.
> 
> thank you for reading, and let me know your thoughts!! i really enjoyed writing this (despite how depressing it is) and i hope you enjoyed reading.  
> xxx


End file.
